On reviewing
the preliminary list of eminent contributors to this volume, I had
to wonder what I might add that would not be merely redundant.
When I was originally contacted by Paola Cavalieri for a little
article on chimpanzees and 'human rights' for Etica & Animali,
the concept of personhood had a prominent place in her
concerns, as it does in much of moral philosophy. That concept is
not employed in the Declaration on Great Apes, but I would still
like to say a few words about it. Discussing personhood will lead
us to a presumption - a kind of intellectual bias - which
underlies this focus on great apes and which I find morally
objectionable. Naturally, I will want to say a few words about
that - every volume needs a bit of the gadfly. Next, I have a few
thoughts, of a 'yes-and-no' nature, to contribute to the
discussion of whether our relations with nonhuman great apes
should be governed by the same basic moral principles or rights as
govern our relations with human beings. Having laboured these
theoretical points, I will, of course, want to change gear and
conclude with a few political comments.

Speciesism
Revisited- The Intellectual Bias of Persons

To begin
with, then, what about 'personhood'? Would it make sense, even
though it would certainly sound strange, to say that nonhuman
great apes are persons?

'Person' has
both a descriptive and an evaluative meaning. In the evaluative
sense of the term, 'person' refers to beings whose interests are
morally or legally protected against routine exploitation by those
whose actions can be directly influenced by moral or legal
concepts. Persons are those whom morality or the law indicates we,
as moral or legal agents, must treat fairly: must not, as Kant
would say, treat as mere means to the satisfaction of our
interests.[1]
I think - and have argued at length for this conclusion elsewhere[2]
— that we should regard all beings with interests (i.e. all beings
with feelings) as persons in this evaluative sense of the term.
That is, I think we should treat all beings with interests fairly,
regarding none of them as mere means to the satisfaction of our
interests. That is what animal liberation is all about.

Very briefly,
the argument for this conclusion runs as follows. Morality is
goal-directed activity which aims at making the world a better
place in terms of reduced suffering and frustration, increased
happiness and fulfilment, a wider reign of fairness and respect
for others, and enhanced presence and effectiveness of such
virtues as kindness and impartiality. Through our exploitation of
nonhuman animals we detract from all of these moral goals. Factory
farming, fur trapping and other exploitations of nonhuman animals
increase the suffering and frustration in the world and reduce
happiness and fulfilment - the exact opposite of our moral goals.
In using our vast power over nonhuman animals to make them bear
burdens and suffer losses so that we may be comfortable and
prosperous, we extend and enforce a reign of tyranny and
disregard, verging on contempt, for others - again, the exact
opposite of our moral goals. Finally, by giving revulsion at and
compassion for the suffering of nonhuman animals the demeaning
labels of 'squeamishness' and 'sentimentality' and by conditioning
children to disregard such feelings as they learn to hunt, butcher
or vivisect nonhuman animals, we limit and inhibit the virtues of
which we are capable — again, just the opposite of our moral
goals. Consequently, in all these ways our goal of making the
world a morally better place will be more effectively pursued by
liberating from human exploitation all those capable of suffering
and happiness and of being treated fairly and virtuously.

Nevertheless,
there is a strong tendency, even among advocates of animal rights,
to retain a close association between 'person' in the evaluative
sense and 'person' in the descriptive sense, where it is just
another name for human beings. Some writers, such as Tom Regan,[3]suggest that only the more intellectually sophisticated
nonhuman animals merit the protection of their interests against
human exploitation, and others, such as Peter Singer,[4]
maintain that more intellectually sophisticated lives have a
higher value than do less intellectually sophisticated lives. It
is not surprising that intellectuals retain a bias in favour of
the intellectual, but this bias opens the door to critics, such as
J. Baird Callicott,[5]
who contend that animal rights remains an anthropocentric value
system. Instead of being human chauvinists, these critics
maintain, animal liberationists are human-like chauvinists, but
that represents only a minor change.

Focusing
animal rights concern and activity on nonhuman great apes and
other nonhuman primates expresses and continues this bias. We are
called on to recognise that harmful experiments on nonhuman great
apes are wrong because these apes are genetically so much like us
or because they are so intelligent, again like us. Such calls
clearly retain an anthropocentric view of the world, modifying it
only through recognising that we are not an utterly unique life
form.

Rejecting our
species bias - overcoming speciesism - requires that we also
reject our bias in favour of the intellectual (at least as a
criterion of the value of life or of personhood in the evaluative
sense). Overcoming speciesism requires going beyond the modest
extension of our moral horizons to include intellectually
sophisticated, nonhuman animals, such as chimpanzees and whales.
It requires recognising not only that the origin of value does not
lie in anything that is peculiarly human; it also requires
recognising that the origin of value does not lie in anything that
is human-like or that humans may be assured they have the most of
(because they are the most intellectually sophisticated beings
around).

An affective
value theory can provide the needed foundation for such an
unbiased world view. Such a theory holds that values originate
with feelings, such as pleasure and pain, fulfilment and
frustration, joy and sorrow, excitement and depression, and so
forth. Without such feelings there are only matters of fact and
definition, i.e. physical and conceptual configurations and
changes. Consider a piece of paper you have crumpled and thrown in
the wastebasket. It may uncrumple a bit and change its position in
the basket. You may even hear this happen, but as long as you
don't care about it and as long as this change doesn't impact on
the feelings of any other being, there is no value here. But when
feelings become involved, these configurations and changes can
take on value: they can become contributions to or detractions
from a world which is pleasant or painful, fulfilling or
frustrating, joyful or sorrowful, exciting or depressing, and so
forth. That paper's uncrumpling may flip it out of the basket on
to the floor, where you have to pick it up and throw it away again
- how annoying for you! The change has acquired value.

Now, feelings
are not peculiarly human nor peculiar to human-like animals. Both
behavioural and physiological evidence indicate that feelings are
part of the psychology and worlds of a wide variety of nonhuman
animals, including fish and reptiles as well as birds and mammals.
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that intellectually
sophisticated beings have feelings to a quantitatively or
qualitatively greater degree than do intellectually
unsophisticated beings. Jeremy Bentham, who maintained that all
moral values derive from contributions to or detractions from
happiness, noted seven dimensions to the value of feelings:
intensity, duration, certainty, extent, fecundity, purity and
propinquity.[6]
So, even if intellectually more sophisticated beings can enjoy a
wider variety of feelings, those who are intellectually less
sophisticated can compensate for and even overcome this deficit
through greater intensity, duration, purity, extent, etc., of
their feelings. Next time you go to the beach or the park, take a
look around and see who is happiest and enjoying the day to the
fullest. Is it the intellectually sophisticated human adults, or
is it the children and the dogs?

Consequently,
if we recognise that all beings with feelings should be liberated
from human exploitation precisely because they are feeling beings,
we will have overcome speciesism and freed our morality from
anthropocentric prejudice. In such a morality we are called on to
recognise not only that the exploitation of human-like animals,
such as nonhuman great apes, is wrong (prima facie] but
also that the exploitation of rats, lizards, fish and any other
kind of feeling being, humanlike or not, intellectually
sophisticated or not, is wrong (prima fade).

Rights
Revisited — Taking Differences Seriously

Now, if we
should treat all feeling beings as persons in that evaluative
sense, does it follow that we should treat them as we do human
beings? Does it follow that we should extend 'human rights' to
nonhuman beings? Is that what would be involved in welcoming
nonhuman great apes into the community of equals?

Protecting
the interests of nonhuman animals against human exploitation
requires extending to them the same basic rights as humans
currently (are supposed to) enjoy only if nonhuman animals have
the same basic interests as we do and only if extending rights is
the appropriate way to secure that protection. It is not obvious
that either of these conditions is the case.

Whether
nonhuman animals have the same basic interests as we do depends
not only on what their and our interests are but also on how they
are characterised. We can describe interests in a sufficiently
general way, so that all feeling animals can be described as
(normally) having the same basic interests as we do. For example,
we can say that we all have interests in life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness and, therefore, that we all need the same
sorts of protection for our interests. The three principles or
rights mentioned in the Declaration on Great Apes - the right to
life, the protection of individual liberty and the prohibition of
torture — are of this very general sort.

However, we
can also describe interests more specifically. This can lead us to
conclude that we have interests nonhuman animals do not, and vice
versa, and, consequently, that we need protections they do not,
and vice versa. For example, part of the pursuit of happiness for
many humans is the freedom to pursue their religious beliefs, and
they need a right to religious freedom (or some other moral/legal
instrument) to protect that interest. Nonhuman animals do not
appear to have any such interest and, consequently, do not need
that right. Conversely, part of pursuing happiness for some
nonhuman animals is being able to stretch their wings; so they
need a right (or some other moral/legal instrument) to protect
that interest. Lacking wings, we need no such right.

Thus, the
answer to whether nonhuman great apes should be extended the same
basic moral and legal rights as humans depends in part on whether
these basic rights are being formulated in a general or specific
manner. In developing moral and legal codes which people would be
supposed to follow and to which they could be held accountable,
specific formulations would have to be employed. Consequently, at
this level the answer must be 'no': even in thoroughly
non-speciesist, animal-respecting moral and legal codes, nonhuman
great apes need not have the same basic moral and legal rights as
humans.

And vice
versa, let us not forget. There is a tendency to think that if we
conclude that nonhuman animals are not to enjoy all the rights of
humans, it is because they are entitled only to a few of those
rights. However, basing moral and legal protections on specific
interests can also lead to the conclusion that nonhuman animals
should have rights that humans do not need. So, specific nonhuman
and human rights can be different without the former being merely
a subgroup of the latter, and, consequently, without suggesting
that the nonhumans are morally or legally less worthy beings.

However, the
development of these specific, animal-respecting codes would be
directed by those more general formulations of rights, such as
extending to nonhuman great apes the same sorts of moral and legal
protection of their interests in life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness that humans currently (are supposed to) enjoy. So, at
this level of principle, the answer to our question could still be
'yes'. In the Declaration on Great Apes the idea of a community of
equals is defined at this very general level, where the often
misleading claim of, or call for, human/nonhuman 'equality' makes
sense.

Still, I say
only that the answer to our question about extending basic human
rights to nonhuman animals 'could be' yes, for there are
still other complications determining the final answer to that
question. For example, when discussing the interests of nonhuman
animals we ordinarily focus on things that these animals can take
an interest in, such as food and exercise. But in addition to
these, there are things that nonhuman animals cannot take an
interest in but in which they none the less have an interest,
since these things impact on their feelings. Consequently,
developing moral and legal codes to protect the interests of all
feeling animals would require considering things in which nonhuman
animals have an interest even though they cannot take an interest
in them.

Voting is an
example of this. Nonhuman animals cannot understand what voting is
all about and how it affects their interests. Consequently, unlike
humans, nonhuman animals do not feel vulnerable or demeaned
because they are not allowed to vote. None the less, which
politicians are elected and which are not can critically affect
their interests. For instance, it would benefit the interests of
nonhuman great apes if politicians who oppose harmful experiments
on nonhuman primates were elected. Thus, nonhuman great apes have
an interest in voting, even though they cannot take an interest in
voting. So, if we are to extend to nonhuman great apes the same
sorts of moral and legal protections of their interests that
humans currently (are supposed to) enjoy, then this interest in
voting must enter into our deliberations.

We might
conclude that nonhuman animals need the right to vote -through a
concerned, informed guardian - in order to protect their interests
in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, the
difficulties of implementing such a right are so great as to
render that conclusion thoroughly implausible. How are nonhuman
animals to be counted and registered, and how are human proxy
voters to be selected and nonhuman proxies assigned to them? Also,
in the case of children, whose interests are also affected by
voting, we do not conclude that protecting their interests entails
that they have the right to vote. By analogy, protecting the
interests of nonhuman great apes would not entail such a right.

Such cases
indicate that it is simplistic to infer that because something has
an impact on the basic interests of members of a group, and those
interests should be protected, we must conclude that members of
that group have a right to (or against) that something. There is a
tendency, especially in the United States, immediately — and
vociferously — to employ the concept of rights whenever questions
of protecting interests arise. But that concept does not readily
fit all such situations, especially when the interests in question
are not those of normal, human adults, i.e. those of
intellectually sophisticated, autonomous agents. Consequently,
morally and legally protecting the basic interests of nonhuman
animals may involve some ingenuity and thoughtful working with a
variety of moral and legal categories, rather than automatically
demanding rights for nonhuman animals to (or against) those things
which (can, will, would) have an impact on their basic interests.
For example, the Declaration on Great Apes defines the community
of equals in terms of 'moral principles or rights', and among the
three principles enumerated, only one is identified as a right,
the others being a 'protection' and a 'prohibition'.

In developing
and deploying these categories, however, it must be clearly
understood that they afford the same level of protection for the
interests of those who are not intellectually sophisticated, moral
and legal agents as rights provide for the interests of such
agents. That is, when the interests of a being protected by one of
these categories conflicts with the interests of an agent
protected by a right, the right cannot automatically override the
other category. To avoid the sham protection of our contemporary
'humane' values and laws concerning nonhuman animals - a
protection that is easily overridden even by the trivial desires
to eat pale veal and to save a few pennies on a dozen eggs -the
moral and legal categories to be developed and deployed in
liberating nonhuman animals from human exploitation must share the
exalted status that only the concept of rights currently commands.
This is another aspect of overcoming the intellectual bias in our
speciesism: currently our most powerful moral and legal concept,
'rights', is one which is suited to the capacities and conditions
of intellectually sophisticated agents; in a liberated ethic,
concepts suited to the capacities and conditions of feeling beings
who are not intellectually sophisticated agents must enjoy equal
status and power with the concept of rights.

To summarise,
while nonhuman great apes should be persons in the evaluative
sense of the term - which is to say that they should enjoy the
same level of moral and legal protection of their interests as
humans do (or are supposed to) — this protection need not take the
form of assigning rights in every case. Thus, liberating nonhuman
great apes from human exploitation need not take the form of
extending 'human rights' to them. These apes will not need some of
the rights humans do, if they do not share in all human interests,
but they may also need some rights that we do not, if they have
interests which we do not share. Also, other moral and legal
protective categories may be more appropriate than rights to the
capabilities and conditions of these apes. Finally, from the
perspective of liberation moral theory, nonhuman great apes do not
obviously have any more claim on personhood and this protection of
interests than do other, less intellectually sophisticated,
nonhuman animals.

Liberation
Revisited — The Real Pursuit of Ideals

None the
less, from the perspective of liberation moral practice it may be
appropriate and even politically astute to emphasise the
human-like characteristics of nonhuman great apes and to seek the
moral and legal protection of their interests as persons before
seeking such protection of interests for all feeling animals.

We humans
have social instincts: we tend to divide up the world into 'us'
and 'them' and to feel much more strongly obligated to those whom
we consider kin. So, to the extent that we can bring people to
recognise that nonhuman great apes are members of our biological
'family' and can thereby bring people to extend their
fellow-feelings to embrace these extended family members, we are
more likely to secure for nonhuman great apes the protection of
their interests against human exploitation that they morally
deserve and desperately need. In this way there may be a
practical, political pride of place for nonhuman great apes -
similar to that for companion animals, who are members of our
socially extended families - even though ultimately, without
reference to human instincts and propensities, there is
theoretically no obvious pride of place for them, or for any other
feeling species.

This
practical conclusion should not be condemned as a compromise of
liberation ideals. Too often when doing moral philosophy we forget
that it is supposed to be a practical science, i.e. a study whose
conclusions are not theories but actions. Ideals are needed to
guide moral action, but we cannot deduce what is to be done from
ideals alone. In addition to ideals, action is determined by the
material with which we have to work to realise those ideals. And
the material for animal liberation - as for all moral change - is
human beings as they currently are, with their native
(in)capacities and (in)sensitivities, established cultures,
contemporary (im)moral beliefs and practices, current economic
dependencies and present world views. Developing and deploying
concepts and arguments which will move people as they are to make
the world a better place is the proper conclusion of moral
philosophy, and moving them to make the world a better place for
nonhuman animals is the proper conclusion of animal liberation
philosophy. Developing moral theory and ideals, as has been done
in this chapter, is only a means to that end.

Ideals must
be kept in view if our efforts for nonhuman animals are not to be
co-opted and to effect merely rhetorical, complacent changes -as
when vivisectors now readily agree that nonhuman animals have
rights but then go on to assert that those rights are respected in
humane laboratory sacrifices of nonhuman animals. On the other
hand, those who insist that all animal liberation projects focus
exclusively on the ideal, and disdainfully reject all
accommodation of liberation ideals to current realities, will
likely succeed only in feeling that their hands are clean and
their consciences are pure. Wilfully out of touch with many of the
forces that move and shape reality, they are not likely to succeed
in helping nonhuman animals, and their cherished, beautiful ideals
will likely remain mere ideals while nonhuman animals continue to
suffer and die without relief.

So, engaging
in campaigns - such as this one to extend protective moral and
legal principles and rights to nonhuman great apes - which take
advantage of anthropocentrism and other human imperfections and
which, consequently, fall short of the ideals of animal
liberation, is not compromising those ideals. It is implementing
and pursuing those ideals in the world as it is. That, rather than
theoretical precision and purity of conscience, is what moral
philosophy and animal activism are finally all about.

[1]
'Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or
in that of another, always as an end and never as a means
only.' Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (The Library of Liberal
Arts, Indianapolis, 1959), p. 47.